Of Serpents and Usurpers
by Kaesa Aurelia Secunda
Summary: Salazar Slytherin discusses the matter of his greatest enemy with his wife, and considers the choices he has had to make between love, duty, and loyalty. WARNING: Contains mention of pregnancy and infant death.


Author's note: This story is set well before my other Founders stories, and may shed some light on Salazar's backstory. It is het, and very domestic. WARNING: This story mentions pregnancy and infant mortality.

Regarding the unfinished novel-length, I do have sixteen or so chapters of that finished and being heavily edited, so I will probably start to post those sometime this summer. If you like my Founders stories, stay tuned. (My Livejournal name is kaesa, and that is a good place to look for progress updates and complaining about the writing process, if such things interest you.)

* * *

Salazar has loved Ceridwen for years now. He can't remember when he'd started. Had it been when she'd asked him to help her work out Parseltongue grammar? Or perhaps it was when she helped him crack a tough new cipher his father had started using? At any rate, he's been married to her for twenty years, things have changed unimaginably in their lives since they were young, and yet, when he finds her in her study, looking at her reminds him yet again how much he loves her, of who she is. She is a beautiful woman, but he sees how beautiful she is in ways that have nothing to do with her dark eyelashes or the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes or her dimples.

She's not doing anything special. It will probably be raining in a few hours - if Salazar liked cloudless skies all the time he would live somewhere else - but for now sunlight shines through the window and illuminates the page she is methodically filling with ink. Her eyes are down and she's biting the inside of her cheek, as she always does when she's trying to think of just the right way to put something. She looks up from her work when he enters. "What are _you_ grinning at?" she asks.

"Oh, nothing," he says. "What are you writing about the goblins now?" They are her current linguistic obsession.

She laughs. "For once, nothing. I finished that earlier, but I need to look it over before I recopy it and send it out for binding and copying. Do you want to have a look?"

"It's all Gobbledegook to me," Salazar points out. "I do hope we're getting a copy, though. Jasper will want to read it when he's older. _Apparently_ he's much cleverer than me."

She catches his tone. "That's because he's thirteen, Salazar. He'll probably grow out of it. I remember when you were thirteen. You were _very_ irritating," she says.

Salazar opens his mouth to defend himself, but all the facts are in her favor, and though he often picks fights for fun, he doesn't pick them with Ceridwen. He has learned that there is a time and a place. "You're right," he says, "I was."

"What's he doing now that he's decided you're so stupid?" she asked.

"Attempting to square the circle, or circle the square, or whichever," sighs Salazar. He raises his hands in surrender. "I am but a feeble old man, I do not know the noble compass and straightedge as our genius son Jasper does. _Anyway,_ he's doing it all over the tapestries in his room. Again. So I've removed the tapestries and they won't be returning for at least six months. We have parchment, but _it's not big enough_, and _I will never understand_, and _I am the worst father ever_,apparently. But that's all right."

"You know his room's going to be freezing this winter and you're going to let him have them back early," says Ceridwen.

"Yes, probably, but I'll tell him it's to save on firewood," says Salazar, mock-seriously. "I may be a cruel father who will never understand his son, but I am not a spendthrift. What is it you're writing, though?"

Ceridwen looks a bit shifty, and Salazar waits patiently for her to admit to whatever it is she's going to admit to. There's a certain look he gives her that usually works. "I was thinking we should have the Chief of the Council over for... a week, perhaps?"

Salazar makes a face. "Must we? It's not that I don't like her," he starts, except that if that was _all_ it was, he would be happy to invite her for a year. "It's just that she _murdered_ my father and sister and took over the _world_ while we were on our honeymoon." He tries to say it lightly but it still _hurts._ She _betrayed_ him, even if he betrayed her first. Ophelia should have understood that he wasn't going to just leave her trapped - what sort of man does she think he is? - and when he looks at Ceridwen and Jasper he doesn't regret a thing about eloping, but when he looks at the world and the Council, oh, he does.

The word _usurper_ sits on his tongue, not at the tip, but at the very back where it cannot come out of his mouth by accident. Its taste is bitter, and he has bitten it back many times, but never uttered it, not about Ophelia. She is neither a legitimate ruler nor a good one, but she was once his betrothed and even his friend, and he turned his back on her when she needed him. Some things are sacred.

"Salazar," says Ceridwen. There is guilt in her voice as well, as though Salazar is a thing she has stolen rather than a man she loves. "You haven't seen her in years outside of the Council. I have. She's _different_. She's less... She's got a husband, and responsibilities -"

"Responsibilities that ought to be mine," he points out.

"She's pregnant," Ceridwen blurts.

This gives him pause. "Oh. _Oh._ She must be _terrified._"

"_Exactly_," says Ceridwen. "She hasn't announced it, she's worried about - well, you know how the Council got last time - you _encouraged_ it." She pauses to allow him to defend himself, or to deny it.

He sighs. "Means to an end. It wasn't personal." That's all he can say. It was a disaster, last time. The first time, she had hardly reacted, but she'd executed three Aurae for the death of her second sickly child.

Ceridwen rolls her eyes. "As if _that_ helps. At any rate, you had _better _not do that to her again, or I for one will be ashamed to know you, and I don't say that lightly. You mustn't tell anyone else, either."

"I won't!" says Salazar. "It didn't work out well, not for any of us." A third mishap would be a disaster, even if Salazar was as kind as he could be.

"I don't even think Gualt knows. She says she's only told me and that horrible cousin of hers, the Healer, you know the one."

"Trust me, Gualt knows everything you don't think Gualt knows," says Salazar. He sighs, mentally weighing cruelty, forgiveness, and the likelihood that one will be misinterpreted as the other. "We'll have her over, then. Gods help me, I know I'm going to regret this, but we'll have her over." He frowns. "What are pregnant women supposed to eat? Wait, don't answer that, horrible cousin Epione will have the answers I'm certain." Something occurs to him. "Why hasn't she told anyone but _you?_" he asks.

"She trusts me," says Ceridwen. It seems to baffle her as much as it baffles Salazar, and she shrugs. "I think she does, at any rate. I haven't asked."

"Why on earth does she trust you?" Salazar asks. "I _know_ she doesn't trust me. Did she think you wouldn't mention it?"

"I don't think she thinks we _talk_," says Ceridwen, sadly. "She's a very strange person, Salazar, you know that. She doesn't understand... she doesn't understand a lot."

He sighs again. "No, I suppose she doesn't. Is she hoping for a daughter or a son?"

"I think she's hoping for a child who lives for more than a few days," Ceridwen says, with a sort of brittle common sense. "Shall I tell her you hope she's well?"

"It's true, but I don't think she'd interpret it at face value," says Salazar. "...But tell her anyway, perhaps she'll surprise me. Where's that goblin thing you wrote?" he asks. "Maybe I do want to read some gibberish after all. Different gibberish than Wizards' Council reports, I mean."

She gestures vaguely in the direction of a large stack of poorly-scrawled parchment; her calligraphy is always more legible in the second draft, he knows. Then she returns to the letter to his arch-nemesis.

Ceridwen is still a lovely woman, as lovely as she was ten minutes ago was when he walked into the room, and again Salazar watches her as she writes, black marks on white parchment, dark lashes on pale skin, but when he leaves, he's a little less pleased with himself, a little bit ashamed of how he's acted before, and a little more worried about the future. He knows now that the world is so much more complex than he thought it was when he was young and stupid. His happiness is not fragile - he and Ceridwen eloped in a fit of youthful idiocy, but their love is strong, and built on years of waking up in the morning and dealing with life, sometimes happily, sometimes with gritted teeth, until the sun sets. For some reason, though, Salazar keeps hoping it might all work out someday.

So far, though, he's only learned to tolerate life's loose ends, and to repurpose them. Perhaps that much can be enough.


End file.
